The Word Eater (4 page)

But saving powerless worms wasn't enough to make Lerner's day bearable. The hours
dragged on. During recess she went to the nurse's office with a genuine, Grade-A stomachache. Of course, the MPOOEs would think she was faking it to get out of recess. After school, she deliberately missed the bus so that she wouldn't have to put up with Reba's questions or Bobby's nasty remarks.

Cleveland Park Middle School was in an old neighborhood with big brick houses that were similar to the houses in Lerner's Wisconsin neighborhood. The difference was that the houses here were smooshed up against each other, separated by the skinniest driveways Lerner had ever seen.

She and her best friend, Marie, had always walked to and from school in Wisconsin. Although it was a lot farther to walk here, it felt good to be out in the cool October wind. The maples were already red and the oaks were just turning to gold. Lerner took her time, imagining that she had won a million dollars and was on a shopping trip to buy her own house. By the time she arrived home, she was lost in a fantasy in which Marie had come from Wisconsin to live with her in her new, kids-only mansion.

As she walked up her driveway, Bobby Nitz's Attackaterrier broke the spell by hurling himself against the chain-link fence. Involuntarily, Lerner screamed and was mortified to hear Bobby's bedroom window open.

“Gets you every time, Helmet Head,” he yelled, and laughed.

“I don't ever see you playing with Ripper!” Lerner said. “My dad says people shouldn't keep Attackaterriers as pets! He's a vet, you know. And stop calling me Helmet Head.”

She was about to go inside when he added, “You don't have to feel scared about going in. Your baby-sitter is already there.”

Lerner pushed up her glasses. “She's not my baby-sitter! I don't need a baby-sitter! So mind your own business,” she shouted, and slammed the door behind her.

From the family room, Mrs. Chilling yelled, “Save the pieces!” Then, all that could be heard was a man and woman moaning on
Hot Days and Nights
, the TV show that Mrs. Chilling had to watch every day.

In Wisconsin, she didn't need a Mrs. Chilling to be there when she got home from school. In Wisconsin, she and Marie kept each other company.

“You must have been worried when I didn't get off the bus, Mrs. Chilling,” Lerner said to herself as she grabbed a handful of cookies from the pantry. “I can see why my mom and dad hired you!” Lerner took a chomp out of a cookie. If she were kidnapped, Mrs. Chilling probably wouldn't even notice.

The family cat slipped into the kitchen and
rubbed against Lerner's leg. She bent down to give her a long stroke. “Hello, good old Martha. How's my fellow prisoner?”

With Martha in one arm and more cookies in the other, Lerner locked herself in her room.

First, she wrote a long letter to Marie. Then, she and Martha curled up on the bed and stared at the ceiling for what seemed like an hour. (Well, Martha fell asleep.) Finally, Lerner got out a pair of scissors and stood up close to the mirror.

“The time has come to take my hair into my own hands, Martha,” she announced. She put the scissors in place and made a tiny nip. A massive amount of hair flurried down. She kept cutting across, holding the scissors perfectly, absolutely straight. Then she stepped back to look at the big picture and experienced a near-fatal heart attack. “Oh, Martha! Why didn't you stop me? It looks like an army of naked mole rats chomped across my forehead.”

Martha had nothing to say.

Just then, Lerner heard the sound of the front door opening and closing. Her mom and dad were home.

A few minutes later she heard the door again. Mrs. Chilling was going home. After a while, footsteps sounded on the stairs. “Lerner?” Her mom said, and the doorknob jiggled.

“It's locked,” Lerner said.

“Well, open it and say hello. I want to hear about your day.”

“I'm not coming out until you promise we can move back to Wisconsin,” Lerner yelled at the door.

“Honey.” Her mother's voice sounded tired. “We can't do that. Your dad and I have new jobs here. You just need more time to get settled. We think this is a wonderful opportunity for all of us.”

Wonderful for you, thought Lerner as she pulled on her hair, but not for me.

“Come down when you're ready,” her mom said. “We're making chicken and biscuits!”

Five minutes later, Lerner could hear her parents banging around in the kitchen. Cooking was something they all liked to do together. Music started up—an old Beatles' album, which was a favorite of all three—and the banging and clanking got more rhythmic. Lerner could tell her dad was pounding on the flour tub with his wooden spoons. A few seconds later, her mom started wailing along with the chorus. All Lerner had to do was walk down the stairs and she could join in the fun.

Stubbornly, she climbed into bed and put her pillow over her head.

By the time Dr. William Jay arrived at Figer National Observatory, his assistant was already
there, looking white in the face. “I have bad news,” she said. “Your star disappeared.”

Dr. Jay spent the next few hours searching the silent sky with a 10-meter telescope, his mouth hanging open like a black hole.

Mr. Droan sat behind his desk, honking out the roll: Winny Auster. Here. Randy Butler. Here. Sharmaine Cabott. Here. When he got to Lerner Chanse, her wish to be absent was so overpowering that she mistakenly said, “Not here.”

“If I had that haircut I wouldn't want to be here, either,” Queen Reba said.

Everybody laughed.

Lerner pressed her bangs against her forehead. She had heard that the MPOOEs were going to pronounce her a SLUG if she skipped recess again. Lerner's goal of the day was to barf at lunchtime. Right on the table. The nurse would have to send her home. She glanced over at the school lunch menu that was taped on the wall. Today was spinach soufflé. That should do it.

Mr. Droan started to close his grade book, and Bobby Nitz called out, “I have an extra credit article.”

Randy groaned.

“Bring it up,” Mr. Droan said.

Bobby walked up and held it out. “It was in this morning's paper. So do I get two points?”

The teacher looked it over without touching it. “Two thousand extra credit points couldn't help your grade, Nitz.”

The MPOOEs laughed. Bobby walked back and slammed the paper on his desk.

Lerner couldn't help noticing the headline of his article:
JAY
'
S STAR MISSING
. That was odd. The worm had eaten the name of that new star yesterday. Lerner looked over at the terrarium. It took her a while to spot the worm, but when she did she almost fell out of her seat. The worm had grown to the size of three rice grains and was standing up on a twig, wiggling back and forth as if he wanted to catch her attention.

Lerner waited until Mr. Droan handed out the work sheets and submerged behind his grade book, then she pulled the school lunch menu off the board and scooped the worm onto it.

“What are you doing?” Bobby whispered.

“None of your business,” Lerner said, and set the paper on her desk. The worm raced over to the nearest word and began to munch. He ate the words
Spinach Soufflé
right off the paper. Then he turned around and lifted his head up at Lerner.

Lerner smiled. “Glad to see you like spinach soufflé. None of us do!” she whispered. “Do you have a name?” She put her thumb on the paper and the worm crawled over.
Fip
 . . . 
Fip
 . . . 
Fip
. The noise he made as he inched along the paper sounded like a name.

“Fip,” Lerner whispered. “What a nice name. I'm Lerner.”

Mr. Droan's voice cut through the air. “Ms. Chanse, do you have something you'd like to share with the class?”

“She's talking to a bug,” Bobby said.

Everybody turned around to look. Lerner put a cupped hand over Fip and glared at Bobby.

“Get to work, people,” Mr. Droan said. His head disappeared behind his propped-up grade book.

Bobby reached over and grabbed the lunch menu off Lerner's desk. Before she could protest, he crumpled it and threw it back at Lerner.

The crumpled ball lay on Lerner's desktop like a wrecked ship. Lerner's heart sank. Nothing as frail and helpless as that baby worm could possibly survive the ordeal. She pretended to work and when no one was looking, carefully opened up the paper. There was Fip, curled up as tight as a peppercorn, dead for sure.

But then he unfurled gracefully and gave a triumphant wriggle. He was alive! Lerner imagined trumpets blaring and herself putting a miniature medal of bravery around his tiny neck.

She waited until class was over, then she put him back in the terrarium.

A buzzer went off. Mrs. Gormano, Cleveland Park Middle School's chief lunch lady, put on her heavy-duty oven mitts. “Spinach soufflés
coming out!” she yelled to her assistant and pulled open the monstrous oven door.

Twelve industrial-size pans sat empty in the hot oven.

“What the heck—”

“You forget to make it?” asked Mr. Ryan.

“I filled those pans full!” Mrs. Gormano shook her head. Then she pulled out twelve more drums of spinach, twelve cases of eggs, and twelve gallons of powdered cheese substance. She mixed it all together and poured the slop in the pans.

Everything was fine.

Everything was fine because so far she had a mixture of spinach and eggs and cheese substance. Spinach soufflé only becomes spinach soufflé when it's baked.

Fifty minutes later the buzzer went off, and Mrs. Gormano put on her heavy-duty oven mitts. “Soufflés coming out!” she yelled.

But when she opened the door, the pans were empty again.

Mr. Ryan handed Lerner a lunch tray. Carrot sticks and a peanut butter sandwich.

“What happened to the spinach soufflé?” Lerner asked. She had been trying to work up a nausea.

Mrs. Gormano was sitting near the sink with her large, white-stockinged feet propped up,
holding a bag of frozen peas on her forehead. “Don't ask,” she said.

“Good,” yelled Bobby Nitz from the back of the line. “I hate spinach soufflé.”

A strange excitement buzzed in Lerner's chest, and she forgot about her plan to throw up. Did the spinach soufflé really disappear? How? And did all the spinach soufflé in the world disappear or just the soufflé at school? Lerner ate lunch quickly, then got permission to use the pay phone in the foyer. She looked in the yellow pages under
Spinach
. Sal's House of Spinach. That should do. She dialed, and Sal answered.

“Sal's House of Spinach. We got spinach loaf, spinach pie, spinach ice cream. Anything a green lover could want.”

Lerner cleared her throat. “What I'd really like is spinach soufflé.”

There was a pause. “Well, we usually have soufflé. But something seems to have happened—”

“You have spinach, but no soufflé?”

“Right. Sorry.”

Lerner hung up. First Jay's Star and now this. How incredible. The worm must have some kind of magical appetite! Lerner's mind started racing. Could she make him eat the word for something she didn't like, and then would that something disappear? She'd have to experiment. What should she try? She had to get him out of that terrarium. What if she couldn't find him?
She whirled around and smacked into Bobby Nitz.

“What was that phone call about?” he asked.

“Stop bothering me,” she said, and stepped around him. She didn't have time for Bobby Nitz. She had to find out more about the worm, and there was only one person in the whole school who would understand. Mrs. Popocheskovich.

The recess bell rang. Lerner ran to the science room and caught Mr. Droan before he went outside. She asked if he'd write her a pass to spend recess in the library doing science research. He stared at her as if she were speaking in Swahili, then wrote out a pass. While he was doing that, she found Fip in the terrarium sleeping under a rock and hid him gently in her closed fist.